Hi all. I think it's safe to say that implementing accessibility for something as complex as WebKit is not a trivial task. :-) When I originally looked at WebKit's accessibility a year or so ago, I was really concerned; now I'm excited about it. Already there are things in WebKit which JustWork(tm) and do so with little-to-no change in Orca -- things which have taken (and in some cases continue to take) us much effort to accomplish within Orca's support for Gecko. The work that Xan and others have done has been awesome!
That said.... Below is a list of the currently open bugs and their impact on users. In order for WebKit to be reasonably accessible for users of assistive technologies, I believe that the majority of these bugs need to be addressed. My concern first and foremost is can that be accomplished in time for the GNOME 2.28 release? Beyond that, we don't know if anything else of significance will be discovered while implementing support for WebKit in Orca and other ATs, once these bugs have been addressed. Therefore, as much as I hate to say this, my recommendation is that we keep working at the pace we are to address all of these issues, but that GNOME 3.0 be the release in which WebKit is included as an external dependency. --Joanie 25531: Metabug: Bugs blocking Orca support https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25531 Bugs fixed: 15 Current bugs: 29 ~~~~ Critical ~~~~ 27097: Segfault when examining an object of ROLE_TABLE via at-spi Status: Unconfirmed Impact: If a user is reading the text of a page and encounters an object of ROLE_TABLE, the browser will crash. ~~~~ Problems Navigating Through Text ~~~~ 25415: Please implement support for get_text_at_offset Status: TONS of work has been done on this. Support for characters, words, and sentences seems to work quite nicely. Support for the current line sometimes works and sometimes does not. Impact: If a user is arrowing through content by line, assistive technologies cannot present the current line reliably. 25677: Implement support for get_character_extents and get_range_extents Status: Unconfirmed Impact: 1) Because WebKit exposes the text from links and formatted text as separate accessibles, a screen reader cannot just ask for the current line and get the full line. Instead, the screen reader will need to piece together the full line from individual accessibles. Because of this bug, a screen reader cannot identify if the text from one accessible is on the same line as another to present the full line contents. 2) Orca's Flat Review mode cannot provide access to WebKit content. 25533: Elements on the same line should be treated as such by caret navigation Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Because a screen reader must "piece together" the current content of a line by looking at the position of text objects, there is an assumption that pressing Up/Down Arrow will move the user by a full line. When that fails, the screen reader is in danger of repeating surrounding text, making it hard for the user to read and understand the content. 26991: get_n_selections and get_selection fail when selecting text across object boundaries Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Users who are blind will have difficulty selecting text which includes links. 25676: Problems navigating by caret in links whose text wraps onto subsequent lines Status: Unconfirmed Impact: A user cannot arrow left and right all the way through the text of a link which wraps. 25669: Incorrect/missing caret-moved events when navigating across object boundaries Status: Unconfirmed Impact: If a user is arrowing left/right between linked and non-linked text, a screen reader cannot reliably present the new location. 25526: Additional support is needed for caret browsing Status: Patches proposed and seem to work nicely, need to be committed Impact: Keyboard users cannot navigate and select text in content as expected ~~~~ Problems Accessing Forms ~~~~ 25523: The text displayed by push buttons is not exposed to assistive technologies Status: Discussed, but not yet addressed. Impact: When a user gives focus to a button, assistive technologies can only indicate that *a* button has focus; not *what* button has focus. As a result, a user who is blind will not know what a button is or does until he/she presses the button and sees the results. 25679: Improve accessibility of focusable lists Staus: Unconfirmed Impact: When a user moves around within a focusable list, assistive technologies cannot present the current item to the user. As a result, focusable lists are completely inaccessible to users who are blind. 25678: Implement ROLE_COMBO_BOX Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Combo boxes are completely inaccessible to users who are blind. 25896: Implement accessible text interface for objects of role PASSWORD_TEXT Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Screen readers cannot present the number of characters displayed, indicate when the caret has moved, or confirm when text has been inserted or removed. Password fields are thus completely inaccessible to users who are blind. 25535: object:state-changed:checked events missing for radio buttons and checkboxes Status: Patch attached, waiting for review Impact: A user who is blind has no confirmation that he/she has successfully toggled the state of the current radio button or checkbox. 25898: object:text-changed events should be emitted for entries and password text Status: Unconfirmed Impact: When the user types or pastes new text in an entry, or deletes text from an entry, screen readers cannot present the newly-added/deleted text. While this does not render entries inaccessible to users who are blind, it makes interacting with them difficult. 25530: Implement support for accessible labels Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Given a properly marked-up form, a screen reader still cannot present the name/label of each form field receiving focus. As a result, a user who is blind will find it difficult to know what information is expected, especially for entries. ~~~~ Problems Accessing Tabular Data ~~~~ 25534: Objects of ROLE_TABLE should implement the accessible table interface Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Users who are blind cannot access tabular data efficiently and may have difficulty understanding the content due to the lack of table structure. (See also bug 27097 - Segfault when examining an object of ROLE_TABLE via at-spi) ~~~~ Other Issues That Really Should Be Addressed ~~~~ 25411: ATK accessible ancestry broken Status: Unconfirmed Impact: 1) Assistive technologies cannot ascend the hierarchy reliably within document content. 2) Assistive technologies needing to know the toolkit associated with an accessible within document content cannot obtain that information. 27011: Implement support for get_index_in_parent Status: Patch proposed, has issues Impact: Assistive technologies cannot reliably identify where any given object is within the accessible hierarchy. 25413: Please expose the level of headings. Status: Unconfirmed Impact: 1) It is more difficult for a user who is blind to understand a document's structure because he/she cannot identify the level of headings. 2) It is more difficult for a user who is blind to navigate efficiently through a large document whose content is arranged by headings at various levels because Orca cannot implement that support without knowing the level of headings. 25528: Text attributes not exposed Status: Unconfirmed Impact: A user who is blind has no way to identify how text is formatted. 27048: Implement STATE_FOCUSED, STATE_FOCUSABLE, and corresponding events for text objects Status: Unconfirmed Impact: An assistive technology cannot filter out extraneous events. Example: It will likely be difficult for Orca users to use an application's "find" feature due to the presentation of irrelevant caret-moved and selection-changed events. 25831: Events missing when a document is (re)loaded Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Screen readers are not aware if the content of the current page is changing, or when it is safe to begin presenting the content to the user. 25524: Expose the title attribute to assistive technologies Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Information presented to users via the title attribute is not accessible to users who are blind. 25525: Tooltips should be fully keyboard accessible Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Tooltips (including information presented via the title attribute) are not accessible to users who cannot use a mouse. 27085: Incorrect rendering of list Status: Unconfirmed Impact: Screen readers cannot always report accurate information about the number of list items or provide accurate "structural navigation" by list item. ~~~~ Minor/Would-Be-Nice Issues ~~~~ 25673: ATs should be able to select/unselect text 25675: Formatted text should not result in additional/separate accessibles 25897: Extraneous object of ROLE_PANEL in hierarchy for entries 25901: ROLE_SECTION should be used instead of ROLE_PANEL for <div></div> On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 12:09 +0100, Gustavo Noronha Silva wrote: > On Mon, 2009-07-13 at 21:37 +0200, Andre Klapper wrote: > > If there have been changes/improvements/fixes compared to when this > > module was proposed: Mention them. > > In the last weeks we have had a fair number of fixes to the a11y support > in WebKitGTK+. I am not the best person to talk about them, but since > Xan is away for a while, I think I should bring this up. > > I am sure there are still some bugs to fix, but it seems to me like the > major problems blocking are now fixed, or almost there, so we should be > able to get them done for a 2.28 release. > > I think it's important to have some comments, and a list of bugs that > are blocking acceptance so that we can asses the viability of getting > all of them closed. Joanmarie, Willie, comments? =) > > Thanks! > _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
